Who'll Stop the Rain?
The phone rang, and I jumped. I'd been watching the Discovery Channel all morning, my version of zoning out, and had been caught half asleep when the thing went off. I reached next to me, but the portable wasn't in sight.
Sam: Gerard.
Sam was in the kitchen, and last I saw him he had been eating leftover Chinese, reading faxes, and making phone calls. He must have still had possession of the phone. I sighed and closed my eyes again, focusing on listening to the documentary--the history of toilets in Amarillo, Texas or something--and settling back down into Bill's recliner. It was the only place I'd been able to rest in six weeks. Not truly sleep--merely rest. Sleeping was something I could only do when I felt safe, and when Bill wasn't around, it was hard to accomplish.
Sam: We’ll be there. Sit tight, man.
Another assignment. Sam had been steadily working since Thanksgiving, avoiding the holidays like the plague. He seemed only to stop in to eat, or to catch some sleep in the relative quiet and solitude of his room before heading out again. Not even the Bears games kept him home.
Sam: Deb?
I turned as Sam replaced the phone on the base to recharge. His face was impassive, weary.
Deb: Sam?
Sam: Put your shoes on and grab your coat.
The tone was commanding and I nearly jumped to attention.
Deb: Uh… why?
Sam: It’s cold outside, and you don’t want your feet to get wet from the snow. It’s been coming down like a bastard all night.
He was moving past me at a fair clip but I grabbed him. He stopped and half turned to me.
Deb: Where are we going, Sammy?
Was that compassion in his eyes, or just the remnants of too little sleep?
Sam: Gonna go get your boy.
More welcome words had never been uttered. I was up and dressed before he was, and Sam was one of the most efficient people I know. I rode engulfed in a mixture of apprehension, fear, and excitement the entire way to the airport.
Deb: What did he say?
Sam: Flight 452 from Germany. That’s all he’d say.
Deb: Was he all right?
Sam: I don’t know.
Deb: How did he sound?
Sam: Tired.
Deb: Did he say anything else?
Sam: No.
Deb: Are you sure?
Sam: Deb?
Deb: What?
Sam: Calm down.
He took my hand and I lost sight of it within the security of his warm fingers.
Deb: Christ, which terminal?
Sam: Follow me.
I nearly ran to keep up with his long stride, but I didn’t care. By the Arrivals/Departures screen, it looked as if we were right on time.
Deb: Gate twelve?
Sam nodded and kept up the ‘Deputy Marshal on a Mission’ pace. We arrived just as the plane was landing.
People started to file off the plane and I searched the crowd for the familiar dark head and confident gait. A few desperate moments passed, and I was starting to believe that Sam had misheard Bill on the phone.
Sam: There.
Sam was off like a shot. He was headed for a small group of lost looking individuals who had just appeared near the exit ramp door. A mother was trying to quiet her young child, who was crying for his daddy. A handful of middle-aged yuppie types were standing around in shorts and flowered shirts, wearing new tans and talking about meeting Jimmy Buffett at his restaurant in Key West. A tall, thin old man with white hair was absently scanning the crowd and leaning on a guardrail. A familiar, wrecked old seabag rested at his feet. At the time, I didn’t recognize it. At the time, I couldn’t find Bill anywhere. At the time… I was blinded by pure need.
Sam barked at my elbow.
Sam: Strannix.
The old man came to attention instantly, and I felt the world rock around me. The black, piercing eyes that came to rest upon me were unmistakable.
I found myself running.
Bill: Punk.
He fell, and I caught him, and Sam, in turn, caught me. He lowered us both to the floor and I held Bill in my arms, supporting his head so that it wouldn’t bounce off the floor.
Deb: Billy…
He was excruciatingly thin—I could trace the faint outline of his bones in his arms, and he was so light, the bulk of his muscle gone. His face was ghostlike, and his collarbones jutted out like knives. His skin was white, covered in a thin sheen of sweat. He was hot as a blast furnace, and trembling… I ran my fingers through his thick hair in disbelief. It had turned pure white.
Deb: Sammy, I think we need—
Sam: I’m on it.
I heard him dialing his cellphone even as he said it, barking orders as he was accustomed to. I felt his hand on my back, steadying me. People were beginning to stare, but I didn’t see them.
Deb: Billy…?
He shivered, mumbled something under his breath.
Deb: Sam, he’s burning up.
Sam: Hold on.
As he was finishing the call, airport security, led by the wonk at the check-in counter, came barreling up.
Officer: Do you need any help here?
Deb: I think… I think we have it as under control as it’s going to be.
I heard Sam's cell phone snap shut.
Sam: Let’s go. Meat wagon’s on its way. Young man, help me carry him.
I followed the two men wordlessly, but my eyes stayed on Bill the entire time. I noticed that he was dressed strangely, for him. Some kind of light brown, loose-fitting, cotton drawstring pants and a black v-neck t-shirt that was a size or two too large for him. I’d grabbed his beat up old seabag as we left, and I held it close to my chest.
When we hit the exit doors the ambulance was pulling up, sirens at full scream. Sam stopped in mid-stride as the two young, baby-faced techs swung into gear.
Tech1: What seems to be the problem?
Deb: What do you think is wrong, Stephen Hawking? It’s the unconscious man.
Sam nudged me gently.
Sam: It’s just what they need to know, sis.
I sighed and tried to keep a semblance of composure. The tech was looking at me as if I were the last great hope. I gathered my thoughts together and fought down the urge to throttle everyone involved.
Deb: I’m not exactly sure what’s wrong. He has a really high fever, he’s dropped… Christ, ten percent of his body mass at least… he’s incoherent…
I glanced at Bill, lying on the stretcher, the second tech starting an IV line and securing him to the pallet.
Deb: … and his hair has turned white.
The first tech stared at me dubiously.
Deb: What, you don’t believe me? Goddamnit, his hair was black the last time I saw him!
Sam: Deb…
Deb: Damnit, Gerard, this fool is standing around asking me questions I can’t answer instead of trying to help him!
Sam: This isn’t helping.
I took a breath. Fine. All right, calm down. I noticed that the tech remained placid in the midst of all this turmoil. He’d probably seen worse before we came along.
Tech1: And when did he start showing these symptoms?
Deb: He’s been out of the country for a good six weeks… I don’t know where, though. I haven’t seen him since the first week of November. He apparently came in from Germany…
I stopped, because if I hadn’t, I would have thrown up.
Deb: Damnit…
Tech1: That’s okay, ma’am. We’re ready to go, anyway. They’ll ask you again when we get to the hospital. Would you like to ride along?
Ma’am. I almost laughed. I could have screamed.
Deb: Yeah. Sam…?
Sam: Right behind ya, li’l sis.
As I always did, I found the ambulance claustrophobic as hell, especially with a Med tech, Bill, Sam and myself squeezed into such a confined space.
Bill: Khud ko mat chuo…
He’d muttered it, and I wondered if he’d coughed. The tech stopped for a breath of a second and leaned forward, straining to hear. Sam sat forward on his haunches. The tech shook his head after a moment and began applying monitor pads to Bill’s newly bare, and sadly white and sunken chest.
Bill: Don’t you… khud ko mat chuo!
Bill started to struggle, and the tech gave him a mild sedative to calm him.
Deb: What…?
Sam: Didn’t make any sense to me. Sometimes high fever does that to people, makes them incoherent…
I squeezed Bill’s hand, which was as cold as his body was hot. He squeezed back, hard, and turned his head from side to side as if he were trying to free himself of the mask. The ambulance hit a bump and it must have jolted him because his eyes opened, searching the tiny compartment frantically. I strained to hear Bill's raspy voice over the siren and through the oxygen mask.
Bill: Punk??
Deb: Right here, baby.
In a strained voice, he whispered something to me.
Deb: What?
Bill: They’re all dead.
My stomach twisted.
Deb: Who, baby?
Bill: They just are. All of them.
He tried to sit up; even with his degenerated body mass, he strained the straps. The tech jumped as the heart monitor went wild.
I leaned forward, tried to catch eye contact with him. I’d never seen so much fear control him so completely.
Deb: Billy… I’m here. Right here… you’re home…
… home.
The word felt thick in his brain. He tried to process it. Home… to his family? He began to relax, but then he recalled that both his parents had died, years ago. For some reason, he couldn’t remember where ‘home’ was, except that it had something to do with the soothing voice in his ear.
Punk… Punk…
It vexed him, this name. It floated in his subconscious, but it revealed itself not to him.
I’m here, Billy.
Billy. Bill. William. My name. William… William Strannix.
All right, asshole. You know your name. Question number two: Why are you here, and where is 'here?'
That's two questions… and I don't have answers for either of them.
A blast of cold startled him. There were a multitude of lights, above, around. Hands poked, prodded, removed clothing. Cold things were pressed to his skin, it was pricked and probed. He tried to fight, but his arms wouldn’t budge. Voices like ghosts, howls and whispers, murmurs, crashes of metal on metal, footsteps on linoleum, far cries of sirens, the hollow beeping and whirring of machines, all threatened to drown him. He was reminded by an unattainable memory that he should get away from the hands and the instruments. They meant pain, but pain without malice. With this realization, he stopped struggling and strained to find the sound of the one voice that quieted his fear.
He couldn’t find it. He picked up snatches of sentences that had no meaning by themselves, but he knew he could figure it all out, if only he could put it together.
"… shallow…"
"… get me a scalpel, goddamnit…"
"… rapid and thready…"
"… going to break the restraints…"
"… Punk… Punk…!"
He picked out the name, and recognized the voice.
"… sedate…"
"Nurse, where’s my goddamn scalpel?!?"
"Punk!!!"
He recognized the voice as his own. He heard himself screaming.
"… blood…"
"I want a full panel of tests…"
"…punk…"
"… the hell does he keep saying that for?"
"Don’t know… we get all kinds…"
"Fuck… you…"
Did I say that? Damn, but I’m a mean bastard.
"… may be in septic shock. The abdomen is tender. I want you to…"
"… cut these pants away, this leg is oozing…"
"… tube him…"
"… to surgery, stat…"
Shuffling. The world was beginning to get heavy, hazy. His chest felt like an elephant was sitting atop it. He felt the sensation of movement, felt choked. Thankfully, the din was subsiding.
"Can I see him?"
He recognized the voice, felt himself at ease again.
Your mother said that once before.
Shit.
Is it she who talks to me? Am I dead…? Is this what it's like?
He stood in the hallway of an antiseptic building, the oncology ward of a Cleveland hospital, a young graduate from Annapolis, waiting for what felt to be the end of the world. He wished he could be anywhere but in that building at that moment in his life.
"Can I see him?"
His father appeared in the doorway. He looked bone weary, pale.
"Son?"
Bill nodded and entered the room.
They'd tried to make her as comfortable as possible, but he could see by the look on her face, the way she held herself, that even with the constant morphine drip, she was still in incredible pain.
"Billy." His mother gave the last of her joy to him in a quiet smile. He could hear his father behind him, his irregular breathing indicating that he was weeping. Bill felt very little but a quiet peace as he watched her slip away and his father rapidly crumble. It would be later, alone in a quiet hut in the hill country of Vietnam, that he would allow himself to grieve. The crushing sorrow would be for later. Calm logic would be now.
"William… take care of your father."
"I… I will, Ma."
Goddamnit.
He'd found his father lying in a puddle of his own vomit a few short months after his mother had passed on, in the apartment that Bill had moved him into. He'd rushed him to the hospital, where he died within the hour. He'd overdosed on morphine that Bill had mistakenly left in his mother's things. He'd gotten there too late to save his father, too late to keep his promise.
Too damn late…
"…we were too late."
"No, goddamnit!"
Pader, one of Bill's covert operations team, pushed him back from the doorway of the modest hut, an angry look etched deep in his features.
Vietnam, 1971.
"Strannix, her throat was cut. She's dead. The baby…" A funny look skipped over his face and warning lights flashed madly in Bill's head.
"What about it?"
Pader looked tense, like a cat with a goldfish in it's mouth.
"They… they…"
Bill snapped.
"Goddamnit, get out of my way! Cai Bian!"
He pushed the man aside in a great burst of rage and made it three feet inside the door before he was caught by two stout Marines, fellow operatives, one for each arm. they hauled him out bodily, but not before he saw her.
He'd let her get too close, this young Vietnamese girl who'd been so innocent as to fall in love with the tall, dark, rogue soldier with the black eyes and the kind hands. This girl, barely a woman, had trusted him.
The image had been burned into his brain, and it resided there among other images of blood and hell, but none visited him nearly as often as the way she looked in death upon the packed dirt floor of her family's hut. Her throat had been cut ear to ear, and the child she'd been carrying, his child, had been cut out of her.
In his more coldly introspective and self-deprecating moments, he often wondered what came first, the theft of the child, or of her life.
They'd found the child, seven months old, thrown on the floor, still alive. It died a week later in the hospital, but he never saw it. He'd been pulled out of the area, no explanation, but he knew why. As Phil Collins put it, he was in too deep. The woman had been his mistake, but the child a worse one.
But had it needed to end thus…?
"Don't cry. I hate it when ya cry."
"Sorry, Billy."
It was years later that he'd met Deb. he hadn't know her long before he'd gotten shot in the belly and damn near died. His guts had felt like hot lead for months, but it was a mere week until he'd talked her into smuggling him out of the hospital.
"Why the holy hell do you want me to help you risk you losing your guts all over the place?
"'Cause I hate hospitals."
"Why?"
He'd not answered her, but he knew.
They're where people go to die, and they're not takin' me until I let 'em.
"Billy?"
The bright light again, the cold, the quiet noise of machines, the soothing voice again. Punk… Deb is the punk… He smiled, told her he was okay, but it only sounded like a groan when he did.
Why does it feel like I’m shouting down a bottomless hole?
"… here, baby. I'm right here."
Bill felt the warmth of her hand cover his own. He wanted to scream in frustration, confusion, pain. He couldn't move, couldn't see, couldn't get his thoughts to line up or his lips to move the way he wanted them to… but he felt her and he heard her and it was enough.
He slept, heedless of dreams.
TO BE CONTINUED…